×

Wood County commissioners discuss regional jail bill

PARKERSBURG — The Wood County Commission believes it may be entitled to credits from the West Virginia Division of Corrections after county officials determined there were a number of prisoners the county was paying for in the regional jail after they had been moved to the custody of the state.

The commission recently met with Wood County Circuit Clerk Carole Jones who had been looking over the confinment records, when people were sentenced and when they were incarcerated. She was also looking at the time when prisoners are transferred to the juristiction of the state and taken off the county’s jail bills.

Jones picked a number of cases during the month of July.

In some instances, the county was billed for prisoners who had been transferred to state custody, Jones said. Jones has been researching the jail bill.

”We figured out that we needed a lot of answers,” Jones said. ”I have made lots of calls and I still don’t have all the answers I would like to have.”

Inmates are supposed to take prisoners off the county bill when they receive the copy of the county sentencing orders.

”We are faxing those out as soon as we get them,” Jones said.

However, those are not being processed as quickly and inmates remain on the county bill longer than they should, officials said.

The Circuit Clerk’s Office has been keeping the fax transmittal forms as part of the case files.

Jones said the Division of Corrections did not provide enough information in the jail bill sent to the county for her to effectively cross reference cases.

In the paperwork she is sent, the case numbers are not included. It is difficult for her to determine which cases fall under the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court where she has authority and which ones fall under the purview of the Magistrate Court where she doesn’t have authority.

”We have pages and pages of names and that is an issue right there,” Jones said.

Commissioner Blair Couch said he believes they have enough information to be able to make a case to get credits for the amount of money they have overpaid.

In a sampling of cases, they found 39 days of credit they should be owed, officials said.

In one instance from the sampling of cases, the county apparently overpaid $1,737 for a single prisoner.

”I think we need to audit every jail bill of the last year,” Couch said. ”If we are paying when the state should have been paying, we should be getting a credit.”

Commissioner Steve Gainer wondered what would happen if they were overcharged for a number of prisoners.

County Administrator Marty Seufer said the jail bill started growing last October and has continued to grow.

For the last few months, the commission has been looking at the county’s increasing jail bill for county prisoners housed at the North Central Regional Jail in Doddridge County.

During the last fiscal year, the county budgeted around $1.9 million to house inmates at the regional jail. A few months before the end of the 2015-2016 fiscal year, the bill had gone from around $139,000-$141,000 a month to around $191,000 in March and $198,355.75 in May with it continuing to grow.

The county has raised the budget for the regional jail to $2 million for the current fiscal year, but officials are worried it will not be enough. County officials said at the rate things are going, the county would need to budget well over $2.73 million to cover the expected costs this year.

Commissioners have had regular meetings with local court and law-enforcement officials to determine what could be done.

”We have a lack of information coming from the Regional Jail,” Couch said. ”We have difficulty boiling down our bill on a regular basis.

”Because we have had all of these meetings and we continually talk to people, we are finding things out. My hope is that maybe, we have credits due which would help us.”

Couch said he doesn’t believe there is enough follow through to make sure prisoners are taken off the county bill at the right time.

”If they are in jail and awaiting their sentence order date, the bill changes,” Couch said. ”The county commission pays the bill until that sentence order date.

”What we have discovered was, in a number of cases, that is not the date they came off our jail bill. That date they are sentenced is the date they become a Department of Corrections responsibility and we are finding that is not necessarily the case.”

The commissioners want a meeting with representatives from the Regional Jail Authority to discuss their findings. They presented their findings to Jenna Jeffrey, a representative from Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s office, who attended the last commission meeting.

The commission has put out a call for firms to put in bids to do an audit of the jail bills. So far,  nobody has responded.

NEWSLETTER

Today's breaking news and more in your inbox

I'm interested in (please check all that apply)
Are you a paying subscriber to the newspaper? *

Starting at $4.62/week.

Subscribe Today